The New Brooklyn

My wife is reading Kay S. Hymowitz’s new book, The New Brooklyn: What it Takes to Save a City. She tells me it’s suburb. Wonderfully written, entertaining, concise. She says she only wishes it were twice as long. Personally, I’m not surprised. Kay does great work at City Journal. She’s a terrific writer and has an excellent eye for the hard realities of our common social life.

The thing about Brooklyn — not very long ago, a lot of it was unlivable slum. Today, you have to hack a path through a mob of upscale urbanites just to buy a decaf mochaccino latte there. The masters of places like Detroit and Chicago might want to read this to find out how one New York borough came back.